MARSHALL ALLEN / HAMID DRAKE / KIDD JORDAN / WILLIAM PARKER / ALAN SILVA

All-Star Game

(Eremite) Used CD $17.00

“There’s much to celebrate about these two discs, classic encounters of the energy chapter of free jazz -- in each case two saxophones and rhythm section blowing toward some apocalyptic possibility; no theme in sight, with power and conviction that have too often seemed drained from American free jazz. What happens in each case is an explosion of impassioned utterance, soul-searing work in the rituals first defined by Ayler, Coltrane, Sanders, and the Sun Ra reed section of which Marshall Allen was a member. These may not, in any sense, be regular bands, but they’re bands without a weak link, whether ego-centric, technical or conceptual. The All-Star Game features what is unquestionably the senior ensemble. It’s a marvelous meeting in which Allen and Jordan dance across the pulsing maze of multiplying rhythms set up by Drake an\d the two basses of Parker and Silva (another early presence). While Jordan unquestionably belongs in the All-Star Game, he is among the most under-rated of musicians, a fountain of torrid energy and exalted invention who is entirely worthy of this rhythm section.” From 2000. Clipped corner

HAMID DRAKE / SABIR MATEEN

Brothers Together

(Eremite) Used CD $12.00 (Out-of-stock)

On “this reeds’n’traps free jazz duo workout” from 2002, “there are four long tracks, of which the first is superbly arresting, mixing hard bop with afro-funk in a way which makes it seem they always belonged together, while on the final track Mateen quotes from Carmen,” marvels Jazz Review, touching “all sorts of bases along the way…. A fine example of a rarified but highly rewarding area of music, this goes next to Roach/Braxton, Maslak/Moffett and indeed Coltrane/Ali, where it surely belongs.” Clipped corner